Graham

                                                        The Gliding

We have now been here a week and are gradually learning how to fly here and get into a routine. Due to the daytime heat, we aim to start out to prep the glider at 07:30, I come down for coffee at 07:15, Bill is there working at his computer having finished breakfast. He complains that the rolls are stale. I wait until 07:20, when fresh rolls arrive, Bill still complains. At 07:29 John appears, having been dragged backwards through a hedge. I comment to this effect and he mutters something about pot and kettle. John does a lot of muttering. We try to get him into the conversation, by discussing interesting subjects such as quantum mechanics and ultimate tensile stress in stainless, but a strange look comes over his face.

Bill is very lucky, there is an Australian called Pete staying here, so he has a compatriot who can understand the language. Aussies and Kiwis get on so well together.

 My first long flight with Bill showed his good and not so good attributes. On the plus side his judgement of where to fly under cloud gave us one glide of 197 kms without turning under a convergence.

 

       10 knts on the averager in straight flight

 We did 620kms at 120kph. We flew north from Ouarzazate to the main mountain range, then followed the range north east until both the mountains and the lift petered out. We then flew back along the convergence line and went west of Ouarzazate before turning to home, where landing on a 3,000m runway was straightforward despite a crosswind. http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightbook.html?sp=2014&st=olcp&rt=olc&pi=1519  

His judgement and help as a navigator, tactician, flight engineer, slip string observer, speed control commentator were quite out of this world. However on the minus side, his performance as a flight attendant was of a very poor standard. We had ordered rolls  for lunch, and he spent the first part of the flight sitting on one of them. He then decided that the one he had been sitting on was mine, whereas his was in an immaculate circular shape. He passed me my pancake without even an offer of a glass of champagne to compensate. A video of some of our convergence flying can be seen on http://youtu.be/gAGTzYPgnpo

The next day I flew with John. He has a very laid back, reassuring style, but is right on the ball when it came to making tactical decisions. As on all days here so far, it was blue at Ouarzazate, with clouds developing over the mountains, so takeoff time was rather guesswork for us. We followed a similar route to the day before, but with the mountains pushing out thermals rather than showing a strong convergence line. We spent most of the day at around 17000’ and only had one tricky moment when we dropped to 13000’ with ridges and mountain tops looking worryingly close.  We then went much further west than on the previous day as we had launched nearly 2 hours earlier and covered some 820kms on OLC. In the west there was a clear ingression of sea air, and we were able to climb well above the adjacent clouds. John became more laid back as the flight progressed, and later we discovered that he was out of oxygen.

                                             Thermals from the ridge top

 Sea air coming in from North west

 

 There are virtually no landing options in the mountains, and the engine would be worse than useless at these altitudes, so it was good to have the mountain flying experience of Bill and John.

Graham